AdAgrA 2014 Conference

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Market Farming/Gardening

John Dysinger

James Tiffany

Lucia Tiffany

1- Why Farm for a Living? & Paradise Acres Farm

Larry Lesher

Alan Seiler

2- Better Together Farms & Eastward Gardens

Bob Gregory

3- Berea Gardens & Bountiful Blessings Farm

Brad Johnson

Byron Smith

Janice Smith

4- Wooley Farms & Sunizona Family Farms

5- The Big 3 Challenges: Weeds, Pests, and Disease

6- What to Market and How

7- How to Make it Work for You- Q&A

Okay, so we're going to ask our panel to come up here for a few more minutes.

And we're going to talk in this next section, we're going to spend a little bit of time at the beginning here talking about, I know many of you want to know what to grow for market.

And so I thought we could take Just a few minutes, we can't spend a lot of time on this, but if you were counseling somebody the most lucrative crops to grow for market, what would be your top 5?

And if you have specific varieties, you can mention that as well.

So where's, let's see, I guess we're just missing Alan I trust he's oh what has worked for you and obviously we're we're coming from different parts of the country Especially Brad's you know the west coast is kind of its own country, but some of you Are from out that way, but what what things work best for your markets.

It's probably more similar than than we realize I'm probably gonna say something that I wish I'll come back and say, oh I should have said that.

But off the top of my head, we grow salad mix and it does extremely well.

It is laborious in a sense, but the salad mix has- it's priceless.

The second 1 that I would say is that tomatoes- and I know that there's a timing to that but specifically tomatoes are heirloom tomatoes that you want to eat in my opinion the black tomatoes are so superior that if people will try them you can charge more for them because they will want them.

And they can be more complicated to grow and less productive.

So those are 2 things that I think people really will buy.

Anything that nobody else seems to be able to grow.

And there's some, In certain regions, there's certain things that people say you can't grow.

If you can capitalize on that, people will typically come to your booth for that, and then you sell them everything else because they're already there.

My wife would advocate for herbs because nobody wants to sell herbs for a dollar a bunch.

But they'll come buy your herbs, and then they'll buy your carrots and your potatoes and your everything else.

So, you know, I'm not going to say herbs, but you would.

The fourth 1 I would put on the list is probably chard.

You may have to sell it at first, but if you do rainbow chart, it's spectacular at the booth and it just excites people.

And if you give them recipes and they try it, they will love it and they'll come back for the chart.

But timing on some of this stuff and being smart about how you market it is really the key.

Because if you just grow them when everybody else grows them, you may find you just sit with a glut of food that's perishable.

So you have to be sort of wise in your marketing and in your, are we talking about marketing in a minute too?

I'll leave this off for that and let, pass this on.

All right, This is a really good question.

And answering it appropriately is going to depend on your circumstance.

So bear in mind that what you hear from us is what our experience and circumstance is.

It's very important though to pay attention to what those 5 things are that are going to be best for you.

And as you start your gardening experience, you know, look deeply into those issues in your first couple of years so that you can identify which direction you want to go.

Louis Jett at the University of West Virginia University on this very issue.

I've been keeping some really close records on our production and he's been doing it kind of on a statewide basis.

For our circumstance, West Virginia small-scale market farming, far and away the most profitable crop.

And by profitable, what I mean is not just growing 1 crop, selling that crop, and getting the most for it.

But some of these crops you can do successfully like the salad mix that Larry does.

Cucumbers in terms of their potential for yield and the price that you get for them are far and away the best crop that we grow.

And it's almost twice as good as anything else.

And this fits the WVU information too that we looked at.

Second, and I'm really happy about this, is what I would consider the only plant I would grow, if I could only grow 1 plant in my garden, the number 2 moneymaker is the second 1 in profitability, and that's kale.

It takes a little while to develop markets for kale.

It's taken us actually about 3 years to develop markets for kale, but now that we have those markets, based on the productivity of the kale, again per square foot, and the amount that it produces, and what we get in terms of price, it's number 2.

Number 3 is lettuce, and lettuce should be a part of every small grower's mix because lettuce is something that people will buy every week.

We're talking about romaines and red leaf lettuce and green leaf lettuces here But lettuce is very popular in the market and anytime we have lettuce we sell out of it because that's something that people are accustomed To using and we use every day Fourth I would agree with Larry that the heirloom tomatoes are excellent.

In fact, nationwide last summer, and this is according to the USDA marketing statistics, the average price per pound for an heirloom tomato mid-summer at the height of the season was $5.04 a pound.

Now when you consider that some of those tomatoes can weigh a pound and a half, 2 pounds, we've even grown some that weighed over 4 pounds, that's pretty remarkable.

Now I'm not saying you're gonna get that price at your local farmer's market, but it is an indicator of the value of that crop.

And 1 of the advantages in having high tunnels or using some form of cover, at least in the eastern part of the country, is that you can grow much better quality without some of the issues that affect heirloom tomatoes.

They are susceptible to late blight, they are susceptible to skin cracking with fluctuations in humidity and moisture, so you wanna protect those a little bit.

The other crop that a lot of folks don't think about, but has been a good 1 for us, are the winter squashes.

Now, they're not huge in terms of their return per square foot, compared to our rotation crops, because that's a longer season crop.

But if you've got space that you don't need to put into rapid successive production, some of the winter squashes are really good.

And the 1 that we've had really good success with are the kabocha squashes.

We grow a variety of kabocha called Scarlet Kabocha.

Johnny Seed sells it as Sunshine Kabocha.

Once you've had 1, you will never go back to butternut squash or any of the other squashes.

They're very productive, and it's 1 that we do well with.

And also, the butternut squash is too, fit into that category.

And we do have walnuts, and it's a good crop.

It's, for organic walnuts right now, it's a fabulous crop.

We've been growing prune sugar plums for a long time.

The prune plums, and now it's called sugar plums.

It used to be called prunes in the marketplace because people like sugar plums better.

We took out an orchard in 1967 that was planted in 1917.

That was our last hand-picked orchard ever since then we machine picked.

So that's a dried fruit, we grow it for dried, it's really good fresh.

But the fluctuations in production can be, you know, over the years sometimes we've got lower production on those and sometimes good production.

And as far as, so that's been a good steady crop for us.

There's no real big fluctuation in sales.

So we can know what to count on pretty much with those.

And then our vegetable crops, our mix, we don't do farmer's markets or CSA.

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Series

Market Farming/Gardening

6- What to Market and How

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

1- Why Farm for a Living? & Paradise Acres Farm

54m

2- Better Together Farms & Eastward Gardens

59m

3- Berea Gardens & Bountiful Blessings Farm

1h

4- Wooley Farms & Sunizona Family Farms

57m

5- The Big 3 Challenges: Weeds, Pests, and Disease

1h

6- What to Market and How

1h

7- How to Make it Work for You- Q&A

1h

Sound Doctrine